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Hi Everyone
I am going to attend NationalGrid Engineer Training Program Assessment Centre in 2 weeks time, I am just wondering and I would appreciate if someone from last years or this year could help who already attended the Assessment centre for Engineer Training Program. What to expect there and generally how tough/easy it will be and how many candidate they invite for 2 days assessment. As from the email its not very very clear what gonna happen as its been ages not attended any of the AC, so would really appreciate if someone could put some light on it.
do the technical interview very tough or basics??????????
Please reply ASAP as I will be able to clear this final stage with ur help...lol
Cheers

I don't know anything about the National Grid assessment centre, but I have been involved in plenty for the Electrical industry and others, on both sides of the fence, so here is some general advice (I assume this is for an Electrical Graduate scheme)?

There will probably some form of group exercises, in these they are assessing your ability to work as a team, to solve problems, to work under pressure and to influence others, as well as listen to others. My advice here is:

Say something! If you say nothing, there is no evidence, and that is bad

Don't say too much! You need to strike a balance between influencing people and genuinely taking part, and becoming over bearing and monopolising the time.

If you have an idea, do not let other more dominating people shout you down, you are being assessed on how you deal with this too.

Do not become aggressive, or try to apportion blame for anything that is going wrong, stay positive and come up with solutions.

Use humour to defuse tension, especially if things are not going well.

There will also be in interview, and if for a graduate scheme will be looking more for your ability to work as a team to a deadline rather that purely technical abilities. It will probably be competency based, so before hand come up with examples where you have displayed a certain competency (Google online for example questions, for example have a (true) answer prepared for the question "give me an example when you lead a team, and what was the outcome").

On the technical side, brush up on the higher Electrical Principles and what is going on in the industry, and be careful not to mention things that you know nothing about. At a recent assessment centre I was at the candidate told me about the great issues facing the Electrical Distribution industry, and how he was looking forward to tackling them. I asked him to give me some examples, and he said 'am....getting the power out...?'

Things to brush up on:

Time management

Project management tools (Gantt Charts, critical path analysis)

Fault level (what is it at what issues does it cause, how is it controlled)

Basic protection

Why do we use three phase? Why not 5 phase?

Why 50 Hz?

Why do we decide to bury a cable or stick it up a pole?

Distributed generation - what impact is this having (fault levels, 'hidden' load)

Who is Ofgem and what do they do?

Be able to explain the UK electricity supply set up and voltages (Power Station - NG - DNO - Supplier - Customer)

How did you get on with the assessment centre? I have also applied for the Engineer Training Programme and wanted to know what kind of maths and science questions they asked. I am panicking a little with the technical side as I have only basic maths and have not really used this since doing my GCSE's which was quite a while ago. I just need to know what to brush up on, so I can prepare.